The construction of professional identities in the contexts of work

This chapter identifies and analyzes some characteristics of working situations that are important in the construction of professional identities. It is claimed that professional identity presumes a dynamic process and is constructed and reconstructed in social situations and interactions. Work has a central place in the life of individuals and societies. The contexts of work are places par excellence for investment, expression, negotiation and recognition of the actor themselves and of others. They are, thus, situations for the attribution offeelings about work, ofrelational transactions, oflearning and production of professional know ledge, which are fundamental elements in the (re )construction of professional identity and which are emphasized here below.

Transnational identities in the fiction of Monica Ali: In the Kitchen and Alentejo Blue

Monica Ali’s In the Kitchen shows London as a cosmopolitan and postmodern city, a locus of transnational identities. Although this is not a new theme in contemporary English writing, in this novel the topic of migration is detached from the usual postcolonial loci that feature in “immigrant” or “diasporic” literature. In the novel Alentejo Blue, set in the South of Portugal, Monica Ali had already approached the question of migration from the point of view of the exiled citizen, whose situation is part of globalization processes outside of the normal push/pull (centre/periphery, east/west, north/south) conceptions of migration. The focus in the article is, thus, on the ways the new world order of economic globalization relates to the processes of immigration and the dispersal of a stable sense of individual and national identity.

Extensive admixture and selective pressure across the Sahel Belt

Genome-wide studies of African populations have the potential to reveal powerful insights into the evolution of our species, as these diverse populations have been exposed to intense selective pressures imposed by infectious diseases, diet, and environmental factors. Within Africa, the Sahel Belt extensively overlaps the geographical center of several endemic infections such as malaria, trypanosomiasis, meningitis, and hemorrhagic fevers. We screened 2.5 million single nucleotide polymorphisms in 161 individuals from 13 Sahelian populations, which together with published data cover Western, Central, and Eastern Sahel, and include both nomadic and sedentary groups. We confirmed the role of this Belt as a main corridor for human migrations across the continent. Strong admixture was observed in both Central and Eastern Sahelian populations, with North Africans and Near Eastern/Arabians, respectively, but it was inexistent in Western Sahelian populations. Genome-wide local ancestry inference in admixed Sahelian populations revealed several candidate regions that were significantly enriched for non-autochthonous haplotypes, and many showed to be under positive selection. The DARC gene region in Arabs and Nubians was enriched for African ancestry, whereas the RAB3GAP1/LCT/MCM6 region in Oromo, the TAS2R gene family in Fulani, and the ALMS1/NAT8 in Turkana and Samburu were enriched for non-African ancestry. Signals of positive selection varied in terms of geographic amplitude. Some genomic regions were selected across the Belt, the most striking example being the malaria-related DARC gene. Others were Western-specific (oxytocin, calcium, and heart pathways), Eastern-specific (lipid pathways), or even population-restricted (TAS2R genes in Fulani, which may reflect sexual selection).

As mulheres com VIH-SIDA no discurso jornalístico: um estudo feminista sobre a activação ideológica dos estereótipos

Dissertação de mestrado em Ciências da Comunicação (área de especialização em Informação e Jornalismo)

60,000 years of interactions between Central and Eastern Africa documented by major African mitochondrial haplogroup L2

Mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) haplogroup L2 originated in Western Africa but is nowadays spread across the entire continent. L2 movements were previously postulated to be related to the Bantu expansion, but L2 expansions eastwards probably occurred much earlier. By reconstructing the phylogeny of L2 (44 new complete sequences) we provide insights on the complex net of within-African migrations in the last 60 thousand years (ka). Results show that lineages in Southern Africa cluster with Western/Central African lineages at a recent time scale, whereas, eastern lineages seem to be substantially more ancient. Three moments of expansion from a Central African source are associated to L2: (1) one migration at 70-50 ka into Eastern or Southern Africa, (2) postglacial movements (15-10 ka) into Eastern Africa; and (3) the southward Bantu Expansion in the last 5 ka. The complementary population and L0a phylogeography analyses indicate no strong evidence of mtDNA gene flow between eastern and southern populations during the later movement, suggesting low admixture between Eastern African populations and the Bantu migrants. This implies that, at least in the early stages, the Bantu expansion was mainly a demic diffusion with little incorporation of local populations.